CommunityRule workshop

Build your GOVERNANCE.md file with CommunityRule!

Description

Too often, open-source projects and online communities rely on a default of feudalism—granting near-absolute power to admins, mods, and benevolent dictators for life. An easy way to counteract that is to adopt some basic core agreements to your project, having a GOVERNANCE file in your repo along with the usual README and LICENSE. CommunityRule is a new tool designed to help groups come up with basic rule-sets, so they can get back to doing the work that matters most. In this workshop, we’ll use the tool to draft basic governance agreements and learn from those that others have created.

No particular materials or software is required, other than a computer with Internet access and a modern browser pointed at communityrule.info.

Your guide

Nathan Schneider is an assistant professor of media studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he leads the Media Enterprise Design Lab. He is the author most recently of Everything for Everyone: The Radical Tradition that Is Shaping the Next Economy, published by Nation Books. Follow his work on social media (Twitter or Mastodon @social.coop) at @ntnsndr or at his website, nathanschneider.info.

The online format will be ideal, because I’d love to have attendees working on the CommunityRule platform in real time. Folks should be able to come out with a draft Rule that they can share with their crews to spark discussion about self-governance.